Laurel is postponing its slate of seven stakes scheduled for this Saturday, September 15, to September 22 in light of the impending arrival of major Hurricane Florence.

The affected races are the De Francis Memorial Dash (G3) and two other finals of the MATCH Series – the Laurel Dash and Sensible Lady Turf Dash – along with the Laurel Futurity, Selima, All Along, and Laurel Turf Cup.

“We believe it’s in the best interest of everyone to move the races,” Sal Sinatra, President and General Manager of the Maryland Jockey Club, said in the press release.

Due to heavy rain the past 48 hours and a forecast calling for even more precipitation, the Meadowlands Racetrack will forego its scheduled Friday all-turf Thoroughbred opening card and will start on Saturday, Sept. 15 instead.

The Monmouth-at-Meadowlands meet will now consist of five all-grass Thoroughbred programs – this Saturday and then Sept. 21, 22, 28 and 29. The latter four cards are Friday and Saturday nights.

The world's most prestigious equestrian event just started in Florence's path

As Hurricane Florence approaches, one of the biggest sporting events of the year kicked off Tuesday with a pledge from organizers to ensure the safety of all participants, human and equine.

The World Equestrian Games is the sport's premiere event, held every four years. Hundreds of horses and their humans have already traveled from around the world to Tryon International Equestrian Center in Mill Spring, North Carolina, for the 13-day celebration of dressage, vaulting and more.

The center is more than 300 miles from the state's mandatory evacuation zones on the coast. But areas in the western part of North Carolina are at risk of heavy rain and flooding depending on the track Florence ends up taking, CNN meteorologist Taylor Ward said.

This games are fast heading to FUBAR territory. The Endurance was cancelled after the first day resulted in a confusion and riders taking the wrong route... they were supposed to pass the vet check and restart the event but in the end decided to axe it altogether...
Partly, I blame my own province who was supposed to host the games and pulled out last minute leaving another state/city to try and get it done with far less time to prepare.

I was fortunate to attend the WEG at the Kentucky Horse Park in 2010 and was really impressed with how well it all came together so successfully. It's got to be incredibly difficult to be the host of such a huge international event, even without weather complications.

IIRC when the WEG was awarded to Tyron after Bromont withdrew, they changed the dates from mid-August to mid-September thinking the weather would be more favorable. But it sounds like after the Endurance false start when some pairs were misdirected, they decided not to restart it because of unsafe conditions due to the rain and heat and humidity.

I just hope and pray that Florence dies quickly and that humans and animals stay safe. Wish we could just blow those twirling storms back out to sea.

I was fortunate to attend the WEG at the Kentucky Horse Park in 2010 and was really impressed with how well it all came together so successfully. It's got to be incredibly difficult to be the host of such a huge international event, even without weather complications.

IIRC when the WEG was awarded to Tyron after Bromont withdrew, they changed the dates from mid-August to mid-September thinking the weather would be more favorable. But it sounds like after the Endurance false start when some pairs were misdirected, they decided not to restart it because of unsafe conditions due to the rain and heat and humidity.

I just hope and pray that Florence dies quickly and that humans and animals stay safe. Wish we could just blow those twirling storms back out to sea.

I suppose it's a bit of a catch 22- later in the season means less chance for oppressive heat and humidity... but also signals hurricane season.
Likewise I hope everyone stays safe... I'm shocked and somewhat appalled that the grooms are camping in tents.
In all fairness to the WEG, it doesn't seem like the state is handling hurricane prep all that well and I can only hope it will end up being minor...

I didn't see that pic on the Tryon2018 FB page! I understand the frustration for sure. All that training and hard work, not to mention the distance some of those pairs have traveled, I think I'd have to do something like that too.

The stands look pretty empty (watching Dressage). Sounds like a number of folks are deciding to delay or blow off going at all. The hosts seem a little more positive about the weather not causing many issues though.

Hope they can rectify the situation for the grooms. I saw a statement that the average demographic for the grooms are young women between the ages of 20 and 28. They need to be accommodated on-site in a safe environment, as befitting an elite international event.

I'm just stupefied by the unravelling of this Endurance affair. This is an interesting account from Patrick G McGaughan ("Packy").

THE GREAT RACE GOES OFF THE RAILS

Of course, with all the events of the day today, many of you are screaming at me for burying the lede. The big story of today is that after 100 km of endurance racing, we will crown no world champion here at Tryon. After dinner we cornered a young Englishman who worked with a middle eastern country's endurance squad and got the whole story and it's a doozy.

The endurance race got off to an epicly bad start when FEI officials sent the field or a portion of the field in the wrong direction. That, apparently, has never happened before. Of course it begs the question - how is it that riders do not know which direction to ride in after someone yells "on your mark, get set, GO!" I guess someone official looking pointed right instead of left and no one mounted said to themselves "Wait. What?"

After a tearful meeting with massive apologies from the FEI officials in charge, the entire field had to be collected at the first vet stop, regrouped and restarted. By that time however, several competitors had already been eliminated for lameness, including a Prince from the UAE, the son of a Sheik who had financed a large portion of the event. (I will leave it to others braver than myself to detail the story of the "Sheik Shack in shambles".)

Oh but wait, there's more.

Apparently, the endurance competition may have been too much for the horses once the sun came back out and many of the quickest horses were not doing well. Indeed, many of the favorites from the middle eastern countries did not look likely to complete, leaving the ultimate championship within reach of smaller countries within the sport.

Not satisfied with the directional start debacle, FEI officials said "here, hold my beer, watch this." And did something that will live in infamy. With the leading horses not looking good and heat and humidity a problem, the ground jury decided to abandon the competition and call it a day. Yes that's right, the race was "abandoned." The official reason given was that after the mid day deluge, the weather was just too hot and humid to let them finish. And to be clear, this has never happened before either.

Predictably, having their chances at a world championship title taken away because of weather made people who had been going well quite angry. What would you do if you had flown to Tryon ahead of a hurricaine just to have the race abandoned two thirds of the way through because a bunch of guys were riding too hard?

Well what happened next will make Tryon go down in history for all time. I don't have all the details but it includes competitors becoming violent, destroying the vet enclosure, a Frenchman cold cocking an FEI official then getting arrested by policemen who had been called to protect the officials from the angry mob, the appearance of the remaining French team challenging the police and trying to free their teammate (swooping in mounted like Knights of the Round table but, you know, French), an angry mob empowered by the spectacle of Frenchmen on horseback advancing on police oppressors like a scene from Les Miz, then the Brazilian and Spanish contingent joining in like it was the crusades ... it was in a word biblical.

I am not sure I have all the facts straight. What I learned is all second hand and I have been known to embellish a good story. But it is true that endurance will have no champion this year. I don't think it is unreasonable to ask why the officials couldn't find a way to crown a winner. It is what they came here to do after all. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why the endurance race at this World Equestrian Games will forever be known as the Great Goat F$#@ of Tryon 2018.

Also includes an interesting description of the eventing - the cross country course 'walk' and the jog fashion.Link here

Special attention to the Prince throwing a fit because he and his team were riding their desert horses too hard in a humid environment... but besides that in Endurance being ahead early rarely guarantees a win unless you're doing those perfectly flat, curated desert races in Dubai. It would be like calling the winner of the Kentucky Derby 3 furlongs out from the finish. I'm sure Promises Fulfilled's connections would've loved that though

Edit: more on this here including quotes from the French Chef d'Équipe. Dramatic but with everything I've read about this sport in the last few years the issues particularly surrounding the Emiratis the future of the sport hangs in a delicate balance. https://horse-canada.com/horse-news/fre ... endurance/

lol @ riders from the UAE lobbying for endurance horse welfare. The Maktoums and other ruling families from the UAE sure do love their Thoroughbreds, but their reputation with endurance horses is atrocious. The whole country was banned from international FEI competition for several months a few years back because they couldn't stop killing their horses from exhaustion in competition.

The whole endurance event is such a cluster. I feel bad for the riders who play fair and came from far away for the event.

Re: The stands being empty for Dressage. That seems pretty standard for championship competition. The stands are never that full for Dressage at the Olympics, Pan Am Games, etc. It's pretty easy for the common person to spectate and understand showjumping, but dressage just doesn't seem to have that appeal to the masses.

I think this quote from endurance legend and coach Heather Reynolds sums it up:

I do agree they had to cancel it because people were riding faster than they should have been. It wasn’t the weather at all,” said Reynolds. “When they scheduled this race, they knew this was going to be the weather; you could have looked at the weather for this area in the last 10 years and known it would be like this. That wasn’t the reason. Otherwise why would they host the race in the first place?

“Cancelling the ride penalized the riders that were pacing correctly,” Reynolds continued. “They were still in the race with healthy horses.”

I see that NBC has a two hour slot scheduled for the World Equestrian Games from Tryon International Equestrian Center this afternoon, 1 - 3 PM Pacific, 4 - 6 PM Eastern.
I'm tempted to watch just to see how NBC handles the Endurance scandal.

So far, Randy Moss has announced that the show jumping portion of Eventing has been postponed until tomorrow and that the popular Freestyle Dressage competition has been canceled altogether. It sounded like half the competitors had already performed, so this is going to going down as another Tryon Clusterf@@k.
They are now showing what I think is a replay of yesterday's cross-country section of Eventing.
Nothing has been said so far about the Endurance situation. Stay tuned.